John Jones. Projection Space and the future

The delivery van from John Jones is coming tomorrow and I am putting the last few details into the paintings.
I feel I have learnt a lot in these 2 months about my painting. I have found a new confidence, a freedom….the paintings have gotten less earnest. Less concerned with realistic representation and I am enjoying it all immensely. I am still unsure of my big well hall road piece and it may not be right still, but those decisions can come next week during installation and discussion of the pieces I shall show.

I have been using square scarves in these new pieces which allow for a new composition to occur within the works and to consider the composition in different ways and I shall continue to work on these scarves in the future. The interference between the floral patterns is interesting.
The florals produce a dichotomy with the rural and idyllic versus the tensions of the urban cityscape.

Physically and mentally I am exhausted. I have felt under the weather on and off for the last month really. My head and eyes ache and my throat is sore. I think I will be in bed on Wednesday recuperating…. Painting is a very physical effort and you are also pouring yourself into it mentally. Challenging your opinions on it, reviewing the pieces, considering when to stop the paint and where to start again.

Emotionally though I allow myself to feel a bit proud of the progress I have made and where I have been less successful in them there are lessons to be learnt.
I am excited and eager to get onto the next one. To discover more. To keep going.Wish me luck

I was having a conversation with someone about buildings. Why I like buildings? What makes me paint them? why particular buildings? the reasons develop and evolve and there are many layers to it.

Buildings have powerful connotations. Notions of identity are strongly linked with building; the places where we are bound.

They are refuges, sanctuary, prisons, cells, palaces. They can be cultural and social signifiers.

Buildings can often be relegated to the background but can also contain all ones private thoughts, memories and emotions:

Within them we live out our lives. Evolving, destroying, living, dying. We love there and lose there.

They aid the construction of our individual identity whilst forming the foundations of society’s common identity.

Ever increasingly buildings are ephemeral and transient objects in our environment. I document these buildings. Fascinated by them. They make my heart sort of stutter, the huge housing estates and the seemingly lack of humanity. How utopia slides so quickly into dystopia. Yet somewhere in these places there are signs of light. A garden on a balcony…attempts of beauty and reform. You have to find something beautiful there so you can live, it may have just been the tree blossoming outside your window…

These places can feel like ghost towns even when they may still full of people. Lonely and sad. Their melancholy I understand. The pathos is a jagged kind of beauty.

Preparing for the exhibition at John Jones and for others I constantly examine and consider my practise. A question that comes up from time to time is why I use embroidery within my works. I studied Mixed Media Textiles at The RCA and managed to get taught by the Professor Graham Crowley of the painting department as well which helped me immensely with my progress and development as an artist. Since then I have met with a number of interesting artists and art professionals who have educated me as well along the way.

Reasons I use embroidery;

Embroidery creates intimacy but it is an isolated pursuit. The spaces I paint combine both these elements, lonely places, yet communal.

The structures, the lines, the intricacy and meticulousness of the stitching are a contrast to the restless and agitated places depicted and the expressiveness of the paint.The alluring qualities or the embroidery threads are used to emphasise the fragility of the spaces depicted.

I wish to challenge conventional use of embroidery as a decorative and safe medium by placing it within paintings which depict unconventional beauty and bleak spaces.

A means to create complex, multilayered surfaces and combine techniques

Embroidery is used to reflect the organic subject matter as it is organic subject matteropportunity to find new freedoms and expressions in painting.

The printed floral farics I use in my works are historically and culturally conscious and symbolic.

A former tutor once wrote this for an exhibition of mine and I thought it was marvellous and articulated a lot of my feelings, for Textiles is a realm in which there is a lot of cute and decorative things and not taken very seriously. My work is concept driven and quite firmly art, whilst craft based in terms of painting and the embroidery in the sense that it is skilled.

‘Textiles are usually associated with decoration, pattern and colour, a soft, warm, feminine material. They are also an undervalued, underappreciated and misunderstood medium. The work of Rosalind Davis challenges the preconceptions that accompany the word, Textiles. Davis subverts the medium and presents us with an ominous, threatening world exposing us to post apocalyptic painted landscapes. The only evidence of human existence is rendered through her use of embroidery. It’s a dark and dirty tactile world that you will be glad not to inhabit. Textiles can be powerful stuff. ’

Freddie Robins Artist and Tutor in Constructed Textiles at the Royal College of Art, London

So I have decided to start making another painting in between finishing two off. Why not?!. I just keep thinking that I want a great choice of work to pick from for my show at JJ. That I like to err on the side of caution of having too much work than not enough and I feel I am really developing and learning so much in the last few paintings that I don’t want to interrupt the flow.

Besides I am only going slightly mad already and if I sit unoccupied for too long I may just fall into a daze of tiredness so better to keep on the adrenaline rollercoaster…..

On Friday I went to Graham Crowley’s book launch at City and Guilds . The Principal there Tony carter gave a lovely speech about Graham which reflected and struck a note with the artists there about how difficult it can be for artists to keep body and soul together. The unreasonableness of trying to make art and make money, to keep your integrity and higher ideals as well as surviving.

It’s a struggle

I work part-time in order to allow me to make my work. But I dislike my droning job. Quite a lot. I would prefer to teach part-time art or textiles more but those kind of jobs are few and far between. I have done this particular job throughout my BA, MA and since.

It gives me some security and means I can buy paint and survive. The boring job is the sacrifice I am willing to make so that I can try and make a career in art and it is also only 2 days a week, the rest of the 5 I am painting and happy.

On another note, the brilliant Vented Spleen has published online his very witty ‘ Art School Scum’ graphic comic. The comic illustrates the people you find at Art Schools ( and the art world actually) , this is one of my favourites and very recognisable….not in me I hasten to add…..!

‘ The Self Obsessed Neurotic’

‘ Under the misguided impression that their lives are so much more interesting than anyone else’s, their work will , more often than not, focus on

1.The Artist’s sex life

2.A-boring-to-anyone-other-than-the-artist obsession/fetish of theirs

3. Their childhood.

It is pointless trying to instigate conversation with the self-obsessed neurotic about anything other than themselves as it is a futile gesture. ’

You can see the whole comic on Ventedspleen.com

Have I said how I am running out of time? This week has been torn with appointments I have to keep, and other non-painting work to do- specifically teaching today. Teaching teachers actually, great fun!

It is the last couple of weeks I have before delivery of works. I am trying to keep hold of my anxiety, aware that again next week my days are fragmented into other duties and responsibilities. At some point I also need to speak to Ben, my LSP and see how his life is!

I cant do all nighters to finish, my body and mind not ablel to cope. Usually I finish way before the deadline and think why do I worry, but I do!

I also am in desparate need of a studio, I have paintings building up around me as I whirl between them, stitching , letting others dry, painting again.

Ben eyes the living room where my studio is in the corner, usually a little more self contained, he laughs it away but I am finding it hard to cope with the mess myself. I prefer neatness than an avalanche of paper and paints and embroidery everywhere,

on that note I have to go!